kittens and porn, you’re the winner!

09 Nov, 2009 • posts i've written • 2 comments

I ask a lot from my friends on the internet. Read this, vote here, comment there, share that, those sorta things… And a while back, I asked you to vote and comment on a SXSWi Panel that Mike Arauz and I had dreamed up, Kittens and Porn: You Choose the Winner and you actually did, because it was just announced as a panel for the 2010 SXSW Interactive Conference.

Thanks to everyone that rated the page and thanks to these people that left a comment:
– Rick Liebling
– Adam Abu-Nab
– Blake Robinson
– Nora Geiss
– Shari Doherty
– Heli Rajasalo
– Ken Yeung
– Carmel Hagen

There are lots of humbling names on the list of announced panels (Hugh MacLeod, Dave Armano, Perry Chen, etc); now Mike and I have to make sure our panel is ten-times more entertaining and interesting than anything they’ve got planned.

I promise it will be a raucous good time and I hope to see you there.

Thanks again!

keyboard cat, acrylic on canvas

04 Jun, 2009 • posts i've written • 12 comments

First in a series on memes, culture, and pop art, I present to you Keyboard Cat, acrylic on canvas. I thought you might enjoy seeing my finished product here first.

click pic to see full size image

click pic to see full size image

The work as it progressed: One & Two.

If you enjoyed this post, please share it.

If you’d like to suggest my next subject, leave a comment.

UPDATE: Keyboard Cat, Acrylic on Canvas is now up for auction at eBay.

measuring the pace of spread

03 May, 2009 • posts i've written • No comments

Faris has written a great observation piece on the pace of cultural latency.

Diminished cultural latency means that the propagation of information is so fast that the spread itself becomes the defining aspect of the system: the rate-of-spread becomes as important as the information itself.

That rate of spread has consumed me for the better part of the last two years. I’m a measurement addict. I crave knowing the deep, dark secrets of the data universe. And what’s more, I crave every bit of competition, and knowing where you and your opponent stand (not too even mention how well I alone am doing). We often work with clients that release content into the web, and I have been tense with not knowing how well that information has spread.

So many factors go into releasing that content: what communities we choose to tap, how well they’re connected, how much social currency is baked into the content for that community, the novelty factor, which platforms we choose, what account we release from, how we title it, what tags we use, what time of day, what day of the week, what other information is spreading within the network, etc. etc. Ultimately though, for this mountain of criteria, our feedback mechanism is lousy. It’s like swimming in the Olympics and being given a time, without rank, without seeing the other swimmers, without the start gun, and without any knowledge of how to swim.

I’ve been obsessing about this, obviously. What I’ve been looking for is a way of understanding the ‘speed of light’ for YouTube, specifically. (admittedly, not the greatest metaphor) What’s the asymptotic curve of how quickly content is spreading in that platform alone, say for the last 2 years? What are we approaching in terms of time between views, or looking outside of that platform alone, time between sharing? Perhaps every bad decision we make in creating, courting, and releasing that information can be likened to friction, and we can begin to measure and better understand that effect in what we do.

If I could choose at random, 150 new videos per day, to track their pace from upload to six months in, what could we learn about the speed of information spread? This question is certainly more vexing when you open it up to events in the world (how quickly swine flu information spread online for example), as well. But YouTube provides a perfect petri dish for discovery (and YouTube study and findings could prove somewhat lucrative as well).

So, is anyone up for the challenge? And can I help?

you are what you link

18 Mar, 2009 • posts i've written • 5 comments

I took the time on the flight back from SxSW to digest Henry Jenkins’ eight part series on Spreadable Media.  In the digital world it may be considered a hefty tome, but it’s an incredibly thought provoking piece of academic research (so read it). I also had the pleasure of meeting Henry at SxSW, albeit briefly.

In lieu of writing a cliff notes version of Henry’s work, I want to instead focus on the creation of one’s identity online (a key component of Henry’s studies). SxSW is a conference for marketers and advertisers; and this year I found the dialogue very much concerned with the consumer as means for distributing a brand’s marketing message.

From my own perspective, I’ve seen about three dozen too many powerpoint slides with the words, ‘Viral Video Concepts’ written across the top. I’ve heard far too many marketing managers speak about their next viral campaign as if their work was already complete. And I’ve watched far too many brands chase the next platform or piece of technology. I know you’re fed up too.

In truth, this fatigue is all our own doing. We’ve looked for easy answers, and we’ve fabricated for ourselves a false panacea. It’s time we ween ourselves from this idea of a ‘viral’ mechanism. Ideas (and marketing messages) do not self replicate. The mechanism of mobility does not lie within the message itself; your youtube video does not pluck itself from one pair of eyeballs to another. There’s a human hand at work here –  a human hand we have ignored for far too long.

Like a crime novel detective, understanding motive is critical. We must investigate our subject’s motive if we’re to better understand why messages spread. In the digital realm, rarely is our consumption or sharing of media invisible to our social graph. Particularly, our sharing of media is a conscious one; and the spread of these messages is intrinsic to establishing our own identity. As we’re prone to do, we’ve applied a myopic focus to the effect or end result, and have completely ignored the root cause.

Our identity among our peers is defined by our use of messages and the meanings we construct together. It’s critically important to understand that the meaning of these devices (or messages) is created by both the individual and the observer; and that controlling meaning (by the publisher) is impossible (and a waste of a scarce resource, time).

In Henry’s research, he extrapolates various motives for why people spread media:

• They are doing so because the brand expresses something about themselves or their community.
• They are doing so because the brand message serves some valued social function.
• They are doing so because the entertainment content gives expressive form to some deeply held perception or feeling about the world.
• They are doing so because individual responses to such content helps them determine who does or does not belong in their community.

Clearly, there is a complex decision making process happening when people spread media. It can no longer be said that content is ‘viral’ or memetic.

Talking about memes and viral media places an emphasis on the replication of the original idea, which fails to consider the everyday reality of communication — that ideas get transformed, repurposed, or distorted as they pass from hand to hand, a process which has been accelerated as we move into network culture.

Henry also goes on to speak about how media starts as a cultural commodity; and through the process of spreading, media can become a cultural resource – but only when we choose to give it to someone else. Thus, we are what we link. We are what we choose to spread; what we consciously decide to give to others. Through this process of spreading media we make meaning among those resources and ourselves. And we’re constantly in the process of defining our identity among the various networks in which we participate.

As a marketer, this completely negates our previous strategies of fixating purely on the content; sprinkle in this, make that joke, get this celebrity, etc.

We must begin to focus once again on the people we wish to affect, and the networks and cultures in which they participate.

We must create more using less.

Here I’ve specifically excluded content strategies from the discussion, although Henry’s work includes detailed discussion on the matter; have a read.

the potential

03 Dec, 2008 • posts i've written • 4 comments

The term ‘potential energy’ was coined by the 19th century Scottish engineer and physicist William Rankine as he studied thermodynamics. Bill, I’m burgling your term. Here’s why…

I never want to hear the term ‘viral’ used again.

‘Viral’ and ‘viral marketing’ are a poor choice of words. Viral, at best, is a backward-facing label. It’s like saying something is historic, unless you’re from the future, reading the textbook of a 5th grader, you can’t just go around willy-nilly assigning value to things. As Faris said, “Viral is a thing that happens, not a thing that is.” Telling me you’ve got great concepts for a viral video is like saying you’re from the future, both of which immediately make me distrust you.

I’m also quite irked that marketers don’t even understand what the term actually means. Viral is used to describe something when the distribution of that thing is exponential, like a virus. Which means first, someone has to see your thing and pass your thing along. But then each next person has to continue to pass your thing along to even more people. One-to-one sharing is not viral. One-to-many-to-more is exponential, viral, growth. And just to be clear, a media buy to make thousands of single individuals see something once and never return is not viral. It’s stupid.

Viral also falsely implies the thing itself is doing the spreading. The Cadburry Gorilla did not, in fact, enter into my bloodstream, attach itself to a cell, inject its RNA, explode my brain all over my keyboard and send copies of itself along to my Facebook friends. Viral assumes the trick is purely in the thing, not in the people.

For anyone actually making content that’s being spread, viral is dead.

If we’re talking future tense, the video or article you’re writing or creating has a potential for being spread. A lot of factors decide that potential. Certainly the subject matter is important (we at Undercurrent strongly believe that if you don’t have the elements of mystery, sex, amazement or humor baked in to your content you have zero potential). But again, the potential for your content to go exponential is not solely based on the thing. People are important, and so is the environment.

I humbly submit that every piece of content carries with it potential energy and the act of it being spread converts potential energy into kinetic energy.

Potential energy is the measure of just how spreadable it is.
Kinetic energy is the measure of how well it spread.

Warning: I’m going to unravel this metaphor a bit and try to put it back together. If you’re brave enough to follow me, please do, but please comment on this post and help me out where I’m found lacking.

Let’s take a deeper look at this energy. A unit of energy is called a joule. Our joule’s could be the measurement for the social currency that exists within any piece of content. As I choose to spread something, I’m making a conscious valuation as to how likely it is that my audience has not already been exposed to the content and how much esteem I will garner by being first to share it with them. As a piece of content is spread across the social web, it loses that social capital. (well, it’s converted to something else, energy is never lost)

How do we calculate potential energy? Well, if we measure gravitational potential energy, we know U = mgh. Potential energy equals mass times gravity times height (or altitude). Just for grins, let’s think of what those variables could metaphorically represent. Height, to me, seems a best fit for the point of placement for your content. Perhaps someone like Lisa Nova is releasing a video vs someone like your Auntie. Gravity seems a fit for the natural rate of how a thing spreads within an initial system. Or more clearly, just how easy it is to physically spread that content. Mass is easy. Einstein taught us that mass and energy are related (e=mc^2). Mass is the total social currency within the piece of content, divided by some constant speed at which that mass is transformed to energy.

Whew.

Measuring kinetic energy is a little easier. Ke=.5mv^2. Kinetic energy equals mass times velocity squared, divided in half. We know what mass is, and velocity is merely the rate at which an item is spread.

But wait, why is measurement important? Measurement affords us comparisons, and in this case, measurement even beyond simple valuations of time. Instead of just, “which got more hits more quickly?” we could potentially understand how effectively something used its social currency to spread.

Aside from opportunities for pure conjecture, this new metaphor does have consequences…

• It means there is ultimately a finite amount of spreading that can be done. Once all social currency has been exhausted, there’s no mass left to convert to energy.
• But you can also add social currency (or add mass), one way is allowing people to mess with your content. Again, Faris pointed this out, too. But don’t forget, work has to be done in order for human beings to interact that way. Social currency is expended from somewhere.
• Your audience and their worlds matter. Where a piece of content is released and the system(s) within which it is seeded dictate part of its potential. Also, social currency can only be valued with an understanding of those which value it. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, etc. Mike Arauz makes excellent points here.
• Most of all, this new metaphor merely points out that nothing is successful until it’s a success, and clients don’t pay for unrealized potential. As Henry Jenkins said, “if it doesn’t spread, it’s dead.”

*Thank you for reading this post and making it this far down. You are the wind beneath my wings.

Spreadable Media

25 Nov, 2008